


I'm running and my time's up

by prettydizzeed



Series: I don't wanna go alone [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, M/M, POV Bodhi Rook, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, is impending doom a tag because that's a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 18:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11064891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: Cassian and Bodhi meet again, behind bars at Saw Gererra's hideout.





	I'm running and my time's up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stormpilotgarik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormpilotgarik/gifts).



> Literally two people requested this but that was all the motivation I needed. Thanks y'all <3
> 
> This basically extends the time between getting to the rebel base and leaving for Scarif, because while I love the "everyone lives" AUs, I didn't think that would work with the tone of the story and I wanted to to fit with canon somewhat. 
> 
> Title is from Hamilton.

Bodhi is hyperventilating. His thoughts are flickering like a strobe light, switching from one topic to another without ever fully forming, and he can hear how ragged his breath is but can’t make it smooth out. There’s static in his fingertips and white noise shooting through his head, interrupting the relentless image of _it_ , its merciless shredding of his mind.

He can’t keep track of his limbs, isn't sure if that grip is from his own arms or if there is someone else here, a presence he can’t process. He can’t process.

A more concrete noise crashes through the buzzing. Bodhi tries to narrow the scope of his senses, to zero in on the voice, but it's moving so fast and everything is shaking.

“Pilot,” he hears, a brief snatch of something that makes sense.

“I'm the pilot!” he says, because it's all he is certain of, it's in his instincts. “I'm—I’m the pilot.”

All of the next words are a blur, but the voice has a strangely warm quality somewhere in it, even if it reverberates harsh and frantic in Bodhi's bones. He tries to make his head listen to his insistent thoughts, and it finally turns.

And.

One of the three distinct roars that have been echoing in his skull silences. The mental capacity this leaves available is immediately used in thinking that there is something familiar in this face—the slant of his jaw, the angle of his eyebrows, the slope of his lips.

Bodhi's head aches.

*

It's a little better after he's outside of the bars. But then the ground, too, is screaming and he's following the not-stranger out of the collapsing world, his chest keening in silence that this was home and is now an absence in the map and flying is no longer safe if it's taking him away from everything.

Something flickers across the man’s face when Bodhi says his name, something he doesn't think he could have interpreted even before _it_ happened, but he wishes he could summon a responding flicker when the man says “Cassian” in reply.

*

The rebel base they land at is crowded, and paranoia clings to every corner. It's late, and Bodhi can hear meetings going on through the walls of the room he was offered—”unstable,” he heard whispered when they led him here, his ears regaining some focus at an unwelcome moment—but the shouting is nothing compared to the clamor in his brain, trying to sort Cassian's face into the proper memory.

There's a knock at the door.

“Y–yeah, um, come in.”

Cassian opens it, looking almost apologetic. “They wanted me to see how you're doing. And… mostly to ask what happened.” When Bodhi doesn't respond, he swallows. “Can I sit down?”

“Oh—yes. Yeah.”

He perches on the single chair and Bodhi sits up on the bed. Cassian taps his knee, not looking at him.

“Look, I do what I have to for the Rebellion, right? And I don't regret that fact. But it doesn't mean I want to. I… I just wanted you to know that.”

Bodhi blinks. “Oh. Okay.”

Cassian seems to study him, and the pressure of his gaze is like going into hyperdrive for the first time, wholly unprepared for the sensation despite the training. “Okay. Sorry to rush you, but we need to know what happened.”

“Right. Uh—I had a message. From—from Galen Erso, he's—well I guess you've heard of him. So I tried to find Saw Gererra, and—and they blindfolded me—and he said I was lying—be–because I didn't have the message—and—Bor Gullet.”

Cassian twitches, just barely, like static. “Why did you go to Saw if you didn't have the message?”

“I did. I mean—I thought I did. And then I didn't.”

The static is unmistakable now. “Okay. So, Bor Gullet?”

“He—he said it makes you insane. It's in your head. It finds everything.”

Cassian exhales slowly. “Bodhi, I'm so sorry.”

“Oh. Um. Thanks.”

Cassian is looking at him now. “Bodhi… Did it do something to your memories? Change them, or take them, I mean, in addition to seeing them?”

“I don't know. It's just—it's hard to, uh, focus? On any one thing. Like it hurts too much to remember.”

Cassian swears, and mutters something about full disclosure, and says he'll talk to him tomorrow. He leaves.

Bodhi lays down and finds a fragment waiting for him, lingering in a place in his mind where he can actually reach it. Hands—and fingertips—and just the barest brush of mouth, insisting— _“Don't let me hurt you, okay? I won't hurt you.”_

Then he thinks of Cassian. And—he has not seen him smile today, but he knows what it looks like. And Cassian has not touched him today, but he knows what it feels like. And suddenly, so much more than the cacophony in his head, everything hurts.

*

Cassian finds him at breakfast. Bodhi bites the inside of his lip and doesn't look up.

“Listen,” Cassian begins. “I need to tell you something.”

“I remembered.”

His eyebrows shoot upward. “Everything? Or—?”

“No. Practically nothing, in—in terms of volume.”

“Oh. What was it, then?”

“Y–you fucked me.”

Cassian—Bodhi realizes suddenly that this is not the name he was told the first time—flinches. Before this moment, he's never seen Cassian make any movement that did not appear calculated, as if he'd allowed it to happen with the utmost intentionality, and now Cassian is flinching like he can’t help reacting to Bodhi's words. It’s like watching a gifted pilot crash land.

Bodhi takes a breath and continues. “And left. And—and the message was gone.”

“Oh. I was trying to tell you yesterday—”

“That you're not sorry.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “That's not what I meant. I don't regret completing my mission, but I'm sorry for what happened to you because you didn't have the message.”

Bodhi wishes he could trust his vocal cords enough to yell, to rant, to tell this guy exactly how twisted that logic is. Instead, he says, “That—that's not how it works. You can't just compartmentalize like that.”

Cassian sighs. “I'm sorry for what happened to you,” he repeats, and Bodhi just stares at him, so he leaves.

*

After a day filled with rebels asking questions about the Empire whose answers he was so far from having security clearance for that it's almost laughable, Bodhi practically collapses onto his bunk and presses at the edges and seams of his memory until he can relive it. Then he wishes he hadn't.

_How dare you touch me like that and not mean it. How is that even possible?_

And, from some forsaken corner of his brain where he wishes all the cells would just die: _What is it like when you do mean it?_

Kriff. To say the Empire was harsh to its employees was an understatement. After all, he was drafted; none of this was voluntary. But beyond that, the people who were willing to pick up someone with an Imperial insignia were equally rough, selfish, demanding. There was a reason that, as he told Cassian, he didn't do it often.

Then comes this fucking flirty stranger with softness in his guarded smile, with skin smoother than Jedha’s temple walls. Who treated Bodhi like there was something sacred in him.

_How dare he._

Bodhi stares at the ceiling. It takes him hours to fall asleep.

*

They're trying to get more information he doesn't have out of him again the next day, and there's been a constant passive-aggressive undertone and he's borne it, he understands, he deserves it, but when someone asks, “When did you enlist?” after he's already told them five times that he didn't, it's too much.

“I was drafted! I–I was drafted and I defected, and—and I know that isn't enough for you, but please stop acting like I had a choice in this!”

Cassian leans toward the tall woman and says, “Maybe a break, Senator.”

She nods, and before he can really register what's happening, Cassian's hand is on his elbow, lightly guiding him out the room. By the time he decides he should pull away, Cassian has already let go, having closed the door behind them.

“I wish I could say they just have a bad memory,” Cassian says, wincing, “but sometimes they're just rude.”

“It's okay. I'm used to it.” He can't expect them to trust an Imperial pilot, he reminds himself again. For every defector, there are a thousand zealots with blasters. Probably more.

He's out here to calm down, he knows, so he cleans his goggles, then unties his hair and runs his fingers through it. When he glances up, Cassian closes his mouth.

“Sorry.”

Bodhi shrugs, about to dismiss it, but something petty floods him, or maybe it's just been so long since he's had a witty retort in time to respond that he has to use it. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were attracted to me.”

Cassian gapes again, so either it was as sharp as it'd sounded in his head, or it was just really stupid. “Trust me,” he says, his complete-self-control voice back though he isn't meeting Bodhi's eyes, “you wouldn't be wrong.”

Bodhi frowns. “You can't just do that. Talk like it–it's just a mission one day and then like—like you meant it.” _How dare you touch me like that and not mean it._

“I'm not lying about thinking you're attractive.” Instead of meeting his eyes, Cassian is looking even further away.

“Right. I bet you say that t–to all the boys whose lives you've ruined.” Bodhi wishes he weren't shaking slightly when he says this.

“No.”

Bodhi knows it's a line—“No, just you”—but the seriousness of Cassian's voice reminds him that this man _has_ ruined a lot of people's lives. He reties his hair.

“Right. Um.”

“I know this doesn't help, but, yes it was a mission, but I didn't say anything I didn't mean. Not to you.”

_Cassian looking at him, biting his lip. “Stars, you're beautiful.”_

“It doesn't make me any less of an asshole and I'm not expecting you to forgive me. I, um, I used to have this thing where I said I would never apologize for the cause. But admitting it was wrong to hurt someone like you is not saying I don't believe in the ultimate goal. So… I'm sorry.”

Bodhi swallows. “Uh, th–thank you.”

Cassian nods, then looks over his shoulder. “We should probably go back, if you're ready.”

“Yeah.” He follows Cassian back inside. No one mentions enlistment again, though a few times, someone opens their mouth, glances at Cassian, and closes it without saying anything.

*

Bodhi goes to his room as soon as they're done interrogating him then debating whether they believe him for the day. He's almost asleep when someone knocks at the door, and when he opens it, it's Cassian's droid, the tall and kind of scary one. He doesn't have a chance to say anything before K-2SO is shoving a tray at him.

“Captain Andor noticed you did not eat an evening meal and instructed me to remedy that. He also told me not to mention it was him, but I did not want you to mistakenly attribute the attention to me. I think you should be left to starve if you so choose.” The droid turns on his heel and leaves. Bodhi stares down the hall.

“Thank you,” Bodhi manages to call after him. At K-2SO’s glare, he amends, “Or—or thank him, I guess.”

The soup is a Jedhan recipe, and he cries quietly, the first time since the city's death.

*

He isn't sure what to do with the tray in the morning, so he takes it to the cafeteria with him. It doesn't match the cafeteria trays, so he spends a few minutes looking around and biting his lip before working up the nerve to walk towards Cassian's table.

“Sorry,” Bodhi starts, then regrets apologizing to him, especially because Bodhi's interrupting him with a question that's Cassian's fault—although fault makes it sound bad, Bodhi thinks, and this was something nice, even though he's confused by it. He continues. “I don't know where to put the–the tray.”

Cassian had looked up, but now he glances away. “Oh, yeah, I'll take it. It's mine. Thanks.”

Bodhi blinks. “What?”

“Oh, well, the cafeteria was already closed, and while the officers’ quarters aren't great, we have a group kitchen and stuff. So, you know.” He shrugs, but the sudden composure still seems forced.

Bodhi's eyes can't widen any further. “You—you cooked me dinner?”

“I mean. Yeah.” He shrugs again, but it makes him seem even less casual; it's too practiced to be nonchalant.

“I. I, uh—thank you.”

Cassian nods. “Yeah. You should probably get some breakfast before they stop serving.”

Bodhi does, and as he eats by himself he realizes that thanks to the Empire, even he doesn't know any Jedhan recipes by heart.

*

He's not sure what all of the loud, important people are disagreeing over today, but it's not him, so he goes back to his room and lets himself think about Cassian and calling him a different name and kissing him and being pressed up against him, and he decides that he doesn't understand and he doesn't forgive him. Then he thinks about Cassian searching for Jedhan soups on a holopad and he knows that even though all of that is true and he's still hurt, he isn't angry anymore. He kind of wishes he were. Somehow this feels like he's letting Cassian win, even though he's not really sure what Cassian is actually doing.

He makes sure he eats in the cafeteria that night.

*

The next day, all of the loud, important people decide to do nothing. Cassian's eyes are spitting fire, and when Galen Erso's daughter—Jyn—decides to go anyway, Cassian goes into some sort of captain mode Bodhi hasn't seen before. He's always been intense, but this is exponentially moreso, and when, in the middle of telling her they want to help, Cassian says, “We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion,” he's looking at Bodhi with an entirely different intensity tinged with regret.

Bodhi tells Jyn he’ll go too, because this thing destroyed his home and the Empire took his life from him, and when he fully assembles that thought, he realizes that all he has left to lose is an Imperial uniform and they might die doing this so he doesn't have time to forgive him.

But he has enough time to kiss him, so he does, pulls him aside when everyone else is loading the ship and presses their mouths together and feels Cassian gasp. And he really wishes he weren't regretting this even as he does it, wishes there was enough time to look at this man with something other than hurt, to trust him, but there isn't so it doesn't matter what else he's feeling, he wants this. And then it's time to leave, and he almost flinches at the irony of in a way defecting from the group he defected to help. But everything is like that now, roundabout and paradoxical and messy, like the way Cassian breathes _I meant everything_ against his neck.

And who knows what's going to happen, so Bodhi nods. _Me too._


End file.
